An overview and discussion about the current features in the Better Sleep App owned by Taledoc Health and the Ipnos Software Group. Also, personal recommendations on how the app can do so much better by addressing its customers pain points to improve its user acquisition and satisfaction.
Better Sleep has the mission to help people change their lives with a better night sleep. Their offerings include sleep tracking functionality, night time recorder, soothing sounds, music, and guided content. They base these functionalities on hypnosis, calming soundscapes, science based relaxation techniques and bedtime stories.
First Impressions
As a first time user of a sleep app, I thought a lot of information is being thrown at my end. It got me thinking do other users of these sleep enhancement apps feel the same way. I got to researching about their customers perception and problems with the app. The dynamics of how these apps operate and the size of user base flabbergasted me. Through this article, I try to bring in fresh ideas that walk the new users through the app while also keeping established users hooked to the app.
I open the app and boom. I see a grid with hundreds of sounds whose meaning is completely ambiguous to me.
Let me show you.
Some of its better functionalities (shown on the right hand side image) like sounds custom made for people with hearing loss such as Tinnitus and deep hypnosis were hidden amidst the large story icon buttons. Again, tough features to explore if you do not want to spend ample time familiarizing yourself with this app.
User Reach out & Testing
I went back to my friends group, online discussion portals and users of sleep apps including Better Sleep, Headspace, Calm, SleepScore, Pillow and Sleep as Android to name a few.
Here are some of the key facts and pain points i acquired:
Above listed are the main and diverse pain points and customer satisfaction rates of these highly listed meditation and sleep apps.
As to the different functionalities they offered compared to each other could be summarized below:
Every app has its pros and cons. Each offering its own set of features from the pool above. I thought about taking a deep dive and customer obsessed view in most of them to come up with a new framework of how these apps could use customer development in a more granular way to bring an all in one place experience for its users.
Core Functionalities: User Experience
I came with a bunch of recommendations as you can see through the image above but not everything could be implemented for obvious reasons. If I have to prioritize based on the level of effort needed to implement each feature and the impact, below would be my top 3 recommendations addressing the clientele's pain points:
User segmentation based on user familiarity with the app into beginner, intermediate and advanced. A user guided experience for the beginners, option of going to the app directly or using the app guide and advanced users avoiding the guided tour altogether.
Daily Featured Episodes hosted live either by celebrities recorded videos and audios as in some apps or mental health experts associated with the better sleep app.
Integration with the Moody app to sense the users mood. Align that with the features of app and recommend it to users accordingly.
Sleep Tracking Enhancement
Every sleep app out there wants to differentiate itself by offering the most accurate and precise sleep tracking feature within the app. My market research brought forward numerous enhancements and in depth analysis of how this functionality incorporates so many technologies and how to best place these technicalities in the app while offering it to the end users.
Customer pain points included sleeping with a partner or baby in the room. Wearing or not wearing a smart watch, forgetting to turn on tracking, alarm tone too high, sleep tracking yields inaccurate results, why am i using this functionality, whether to place the phone on a nightstand or keep it on the bed itself. Using these troubling factors as my base I prioritized following recommendations:
User Input of people in the room to suggest the user the best sleep tracking mechanism.
Daily Reminder Integration with the Calendar App
Polysomnography- Diagnosing mental heath issues by running machine learning algorithms on sleep recorded data and sharing with mental health experts for treatment.
Some sleep apps reported an increase of 3% in user retention after implementing the above features.
Final Recommendations & Conclusion
These apps in terms of long-term product strategy have to come up with a self-sustainable model that keeps user satisfaction and validation high.
I am recommending such a model above used by SleepScore App which was responsible for bringing down its churn rate from 33% to 12%.
In Conclusion, it all boils down to user experience eventually!
Please find my detailed powerpoint presentation consisting of the above mentioned recommendations below:
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